The Witch Haven

by Sasha Peyton Smith

  They dragged my mother off to the asylum in the middle of the afternoon. She didn’t scream at all when they took her. But I did.

  Finally, the ambulance begins to slow. We creep down residential streets speckled with mansions and browning gardens. To our left there’s a park, looming as large as Central Park but twice as dark and three times as overgrown, more forest than anything. It seems dimmer somehow, as if the skies this far from Manhattan are a different shade of blue.

  We make one final turn down a driveway all but hidden by a canopy of live oak trees. At the bottom of the drive there is an iron gate at least eight feet high. The rest of the property, which looks to be nearly the size of a city block, is surrounded by a stone wall just as tall. The wall is old, not crumbling, but old, as if it sprung up from the earth itself.

  Stuck in the ground at the base of the wall is a sign. It’s hanging lopsided on its frame, supported by a single, sad chain. The white paint is chipping, revealing layer upon layer of flaking grime. In faded black are the words:

  HAXAHAVEN SANITARIUM

  TURN BACK FOR THE SAFETY OF YOURSELF AND OTHERS.

  An ivy plant is choking the sign, doing its very best to pull it back down to the purple-thistle-covered earth.

  Helen steps out of the ambulance but the machine still rumbling. She pulls a brass key the size of her palm from the pocket of her apron and undoes the padlock on the gate.

  It’s a little rude, really. If the great state of New York is going to commit me to an asylum, they could have sent me to the same one as my mother.

  It’s too late to protest now, so I sit in silence as Helen reenters the driver’s seat and takes us up a narrow drive. The gate shuts behind us with a clank. When I glance back, the lock is latched once more. Then, from behind the cover of branches, an imposing building comes into view.

  Like the sign, this place has seen better days. The Grecian style estate has a white facade marked by hulking columns, grayish with the decay of time and bowed, struggling to carry the weight of the roof, which looks in danger of sliding right off. There’s a lawn of weeds bordering a circular drive covered in pale pea gravel. Ivy climbs over the porch and up the columns, reaching for the dingy windows. The few white chairs placed beside the front doors look as if they might turn to dust and float away on the wind—if they don’t fall through the rotting wood of the porch first.

  What’s strangest is the eerie stillness, the emptiness of the porch and front lawn. I’ve never heard of a sanitarium where patients don’t recover out of doors.

  I’ve read the exposés in the papers about sanitariums. One former patient said they were experimented on. Another said they were locked inside their rooms for twenty-two hours a day. Maybe I should have let the police take me; maybe jail would have been better than this. At least prison has to give you a sentence; a sanitarium can keep you forever. Jesus, Frances, what have you done?

  The ambulance halts directly in front of the crumbling steps of the porch.

  I glance back at the gate; it doesn’t look as if it would be terribly hard to climb. I could make a break for it.

  Maxine finally awakens. “Here already?” she mumbles.

  As gracefully as she slid herself in, she slides out of the stretcher and makes a little hop to the ground. The gravel crunches beneath her boots.

  I stare at her, eyes wide in terror. Why did you bring me here? I want to shout at her.

  Instead, I follow her.

  Squaring my shoulders, I steel myself for the horrors of a state-run sanitarium. I picture dingy gray walls, people forgotten in their rolling chairs, left alone to hack up a lung, bloodstained rags scattered across the ground like fall leaves.

  Helen leaves to park the ambulance, and I follow Maxine up the ancient stairs and through the creaking white double doors.

  I blink my eyes twice, trying to adjust to the sudden flood of light. Instead of blood and sickness, there are shining marble floors that soar into goliath white columns and twin staircases, sweeping elegantly up either side of the entry hall. Sparkling crystal chandeliers dot the vaulted ceiling, reflecting the light streaming in from the floor-to-ceiling diamond-pane windows, throwing rainbows all across the room. My heart stutters a beat; it’s the only sensation that keeps me from believing that I am dead and in heaven, which is apparently in Queens.

  The outside of this place may look abandoned, but inside is a flurry of activity. Dozens of girls scurry about, dressed all in black from their pinafores to their knee socks to their elbow-length capes, identical to Maxine’s, fluttering behind them as they rush off to various destinations.

  Maxine’s mouth hitches in a half smile.

  “Welcome,” she says, with a flourish of her gloved hand, “to Haxahaven Academy.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  My mind takes a moment to catch up to what Maxine just said to me. The words “Haxahaven Academy” bounce around between my ears before I fully grasp their meaning.

  “Academy?” I turn to her.

  “Haxahaven Academy, yes. That’s what I said.” She’s smiling like she finds my frantic confusion comical.

  “You said this was a sanitarium.”

  “A most clever disguise. You’ll find we’re very clever here,” she says with a wink. If we were friends, I’d tell her to quit it with the dramatics, but we are not friends.

  Girls bustling around the great hall slow a few at a time, stopping to take in the newcomer standing in their foyer. They glance at me briefly, a few mutter something to their nearby friends, and then they continue on their way.

  I imagine how I must look to them, standing in their fairy-tale entryway. I wish I’d had time for a bath, or that I wasn’t still wearing a corset stained with the blood of a man I’d killed.

  Helen steps in through the front door, back from parking the ambulance. She stands square and squat next to lithe Maxine. The long trip has made her hair even frizzier, and it springs from the fluffy bun atop her head as if trying to escape.

  “Be nice to the poor girl, Maxine,” she scolds.

  “I am being nice!” Maxine responds, offended by the very idea of her introduction lacking niceness.

  “Be nice, or I’ll be the one conducting the orientation,” she says, with a small jab to Maxine’s rib cage with her elbow.

  Maxine huffs out an annoyed sigh. “What’s the fun in being a witch if I can’t be a mysterious witch?”

  Helen rolls her eyes and walks toward a door to the left of the entry hall.

  Over her shoulder she calls, “Be nice, or I’ll tell Mrs. Vykotsky you’re not to be trusted with the next one!”

  “Helen’s always so certain she knows what’s best,” Maxine whispers to me conspiratorially.

  My mind whirs in an attempt to consolidate the hurricane of information dumped on me.

  “You said this was an academy?” I look at her for confirmation, and she nods once, obviously annoyed that I’ve been so slow on the uptake. “Aren’t you a nurse? Where are the patients? Where do we convalesce?”

  She shrugs. “We lied.”

  “You lied?” The room tilts a little; my knees are weak.

  “Because no one lets us take girls away for something as inconsequential as an education.”

  It’s the closest thing I’ve gotten to what feels like an honest answer from her. “I left school at fourteen to work. I had no intention of returning.” The Clinton Street Public School on the Lower East Side could only be described as “brutal.” I think I must have loved learning at some point in my life, but rulers on knuckles rapped all the questions out of me a long time ago.

  “And yet here we are,” Maxine replies.

  “I don’t understand.”

  She sighs heavily. “You’ll meet with the headmistress shortly. The whole murder-charge thing mucked up the orientation process—we had to get you out quickly.”

  “Sorry about that, I didn’t have much of a choice,” I snap.

  She’s disarmingly sincere as she replies, �
�We know.”

  “How?”

  “I can’t quite say. The headmistress is particular about the welcome speech she gives to the new girls. What I am allowed to tell you is that you’re safe, you’re sane, and you’re not in any trouble.” Then she turns on her heel and trots up the marble stairs.

  I follow her, because my other option is to stay standing like an idiot in the entryway alone.

  Maxine’s long legs carry her so quickly, I have to hurry to stay behind her, muttering frustrated little excuse-mes to the other girls as I push past them. The odd thing, I realize after a moment, is that they’re not all girls. The people in the foyer and on the staircase are women of all ages, all in the same black cape and pinafore. One woman has cropped snow-white hair; another girl of only ten or eleven passes me in a rush. A few even wear trousers. Light streams in from the windows, casting the marble hall in a glow so white, it’s almost blinding.

  Maxine takes me across the second-floor landing and up another side staircase to the third floor. Here the carpet is lush and black, in contrast to the stark white of the floors below.

  Only small slivers of the gold damask walls are visible. The rest is almost entirely covered with portraits, tintypes, and photographs of women.

  I pass one photograph that can’t be more than a few years old of a group of girls smiling and laughing with their arms thrown around one another in front of a lake. It hangs next to a portrait of a very stern-looking woman wearing an Elizabethan collar.

  It’s unclear where the girls on the stairs and in the entryway were headed, but it wasn’t here; the halls upstairs seem to be abandoned except for Maxine and me.

  A flash of movement from the corner of my eye makes me jump. With a gasp, I bring my hand to my chest, as a tabby cat emerges from the dark corner, a still-flapping moth in her mouth and a self-satisfied look in her eye.

  “They’re everywhere,” Maxine says in response to my startle.

  “Cats?”

  “Yes, the cats.”

  “Intentionally?”

  “Not particularly. They keep the moths at bay and most don’t scratch too badly. The black one in the kitchens bites, though.”

  The tabby retreats with her prize back into the shadows, and I follow Maxine down the hall.

  We pass door after wooden door, until finally she stops at one painted with an elegant 11.

  “This will be your room,” Maxine says.

  Despite Maxine’s assurances of safety, I’m still confused and upset. I’ve been taken from my home, my job, and told I am to live at this strange school full of strange women. The thought of my mother sitting alone and without visitors in the asylum makes me sick. It’s not Maxine’s fault. It’s not anyone’s fault but Mr. Hues’s, but knowing that doesn’t stop the waves of anger.

  Maxine pushes the door open. Upon first glance, I am reminded of the apartment above the dress shop. Four beds, two on each side, pushed against the walls, but unlike the cheap iron bedsteads of the shop apartment, these are hand-carved wooden canopy beds.

  Like the hallway, the carpet in this room is a lush black that contrasts beautifully with the gold vanity positioned at the far side of the room. The wallpaper is the same as the hallway. It must be the nicest room I’ve ever been in.

  “Here is your bed.” Maxine waves toward the bed closest to us on the left side of the room. “I trust you’ll find all you need here. The fall uniform is laid out for you already, and you’ll find four more hanging in the wardrobe. Shoes are under the bed. The rest of the girls will show you where everything else is kept.”

  “All right.”

  “I suspect you’re exhausted. After my first outburst, I slept for three days, thought my head was going to explode with the pain of it. Some girls are out for a week. I’ll let you rest.”

  She makes her way for the door.

  “Outburst—” I blurt.

  She turns to face me, her eyebrows raised in a question.

  I’m suddenly very angry with Maxine and all of her sly smiles. “It wasn’t my fault. I don’t know how the scissors ended up in his neck, but I didn’t put them there.”

  Maxine sighs. “Mrs. Vykotsky will explain everything.”

  “I’m not going to jail, then?” Speaking the words feels dangerous, as if somehow, by acknowledging that I am a person who belongs in prison, I make it real.

  Maxine laughs and turns to exit the room. “Not yet!” she calls on her way out the door.

  And then I am alone.

  I walk to the bed, my bed, and thumb over the uniform someone’s laid out for me. A black cotton blouse that puffs out a little before coming in at the elbows, with a black pinafore laid on top. There’s a pair of black woolen knee socks, a coil of black velvet ribbon for my hair, and my very own cape, the same as everyone else’s. I trail my fingers over the clothing; the quality of the fabric and the construction is extraordinary.

  What I’m most thrilled about, however, are the undergarments. Three perfect corsets accompanied by silk chemises nicer than anything I’ve ever owned. The thought of ripping my bloodstained corset off fills me with such relief, I choke out an elated laugh into the empty room.

  In the mirror on the far side of the room I catch a glimpse of my throat, a mottled bruise green. It doesn’t matter; this skin doesn’t feel much like my own anyhow.

  Maxine was right about the exhaustion; I feel about as heavy and lucid as a log.

  But I don’t slip immediately beneath the duvet. I walk to the single-pane diamond glass window and place my hand at the spot where the cold leaches through the casing. The third floor offers an unobstructed view of the tangle of trees that is Forest Park. Directly below me, encased within Haxahaven’s wall, is a sad courtyard.

  I unclip the lock and push the window open simply for the reassurance that I can. Three floors up is too far to jump. Not that I would. Not yet at, least.

  Finally, I lie down on top of the blankets because I don’t know what else to do. The canopy is made of dark red velvet that matches the covers laid across the bed. I run my hands over the real goose-down pillows and sigh.

  Once, when I was six, I was sent home from school because I couldn’t stop crying. When my mother inquired as to what happened, I did my best to explain. I told her I had raised my hand, which I rarely did, and asked my teacher when were we going to learn what was on other side of the map of the world that hung on the wall of our classroom. She flipped it over and showed me it was blank. “That is the whole world. There is no more.” All the things I would ever see or know were printed right there on a paper with no second side, no new world to explore. There was no more. My little heart couldn’t take it.

  But now, in a bed carved with fairies and snaking vines, I feel as if my teacher may have been wrong. Here I am, on the opposite side of the map, in a world that is entirely new.

  * * *

  I dream of a mansion draped in golds and maroons. A group of men in finely tailored suits sits around a glossy mahogany table. I’m standing in the corner, watching their meeting like a specter, when a boy in a gray overcoat and disheveled curly hair sidles up next to me. He reaches over to hold my hand, except—no. He’s handing me something. He presses my sewing shears into my hand; they’re as warm as an embrace and wet with thick blood. It seeps hot between my fingers. A single drop falls onto the white carpet. The boy winks. The men at the table go silent. Their gazes snap to me.

  I wake, disoriented, but the feathered pillow is solid beneath my head. The damask wallpaper, the velvet canopy, that’s all still here too. This room, at least, isn’t something I dreamed up.

  The boy. He’s real too. Or was real at one point. We’ve met before.

  He was in my apartment last December, just after Christmas. I remember it vividly, William barreling into the apartment well after dark, waking me from a dead sleep on a night so cold there was frost on my quilt.

  I lit the lamp on my bedside table and carried it out into the kitchen, where I found William
half-slumped and hanging off the shoulders of a disarmingly handsome boy. He never brought friends around, unless the friend was Oliver, and even that was rare.

  My brother and this boy were swaying in the entryway singing a drinking song about a lost love. They went silent when they saw me.

  “What’s wrong?” I greeted them.

  “Mm’fine,” William slurred.

  “A bit too much to drink, I’m afraid,” the boy replied.

  “Well I hope you had fun,” I sniped. My annoyance teetered dangerously on the edge of rage. William never came home drunk. I didn’t even know he drank. I’d spent all evening cleaning the apartment, scraping together a stove full of food, brushing mom’s hair, organizing the wash, all while William was out making a fool of himself with friends I didn’t know.

  “Thanks, I’ll take him from here,” I said to the boy. He looked at me a little glassy-eyed, and I wondered if he’d had too much to drink too.

  “I’m Finn,” he blurted. I remember being surprised by his Irish accent.

  “Ahhh, Finny boy!” William muttered into his friend’s collar.

  I wasn’t expecting an introduction. “Um, I’m Frances. William’s sister.”

  “He talks a lot about you,” Finn replied.

  “My precious baby sister,” William mumbled as I transferred one of his arms from Finn’s shoulder to mine.

  William stumbled, almost taking me to the floor with him.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Finn breathed, picking up my brother’s other side.

  Together we half walked, half dragged William to his bed and laid him down on top of the covers.

  Finn made quick work of my brother’s shoelaces, which was impressive, because he wasn’t looking at William—he was looking at me. The kind of penetrating serious gaze that made me want to hide behind my unbound hair.

  “How do you know my brother?”